Illegal butt enhancements could be America’s next major epidemic. The Booty shot game has become a lucrative business for plastic surgeons and hustlers alike.

Most of the women who seek the procedure can?t afford the prices to get it professionally done, so they hit the back alleys for discount work from unqualified sources. But even with professional procedures, the results can range from pleasantly plump to disfiguring & life threatening.

Anyone with a basic understanding of health and medicine knows that pumping someone?s body full of free-flowing substances like silicone is extremely dangerous. Hence it has been illegal to inject fluids like silicone into the body for cosmetic purposes since the late 60s, so these butt-pumping procedures are typically performed by back-alley quacks?rogue nut jobs with suitcases full of dirty needles and flasks full of muck. These procedures can trigger a strong autoimmune response as the body attempts to expel the foreign substance, resulting in inflammatory reactions such as polyps, boils, skin discoloration, and even necrosis. These substances have also been known to migrate through the body and fuse themselves to organs, or enter into the bloodstream, spreading infection throughout the body and causing septic shock?which can lead to the amputation of infected body parts or, in the worst cases, death.

In October, I met Oscarina at the beauty salon she owns in Coral Gables, Florida, to better understand why someone would inject their butt with toxic chemicals. She wore a form-fitting pantssuit, high heels that cackled against the salon?s linoleum floor, and a citrusy perfume that permeated the room as she paced back and forth from the shampoo bowls to her styling chair. Surprisingly, her butt seemed high and round. It looked pretty good, especially considering that only a few years ago her haunches had mutated into a distorted heap of poisoned flesh and immense pain.

Oscarina is lucky. She?s one of the few women who, after realizing something was very wrong with her new ass, managed to find a doctor who was willing to surgically remove the substances from her body and rebuild her butt, possibly saving her life in the process. She told me that the whole ordeal is something she feels gravely foolish about now, considering she was blessed with a shapely Dominican figure. But in south Florida, where gargantuan asses plop down every boardwalk and beach each minute of the day, just having a ?nice butt? isn?t good enough for many. ?No one [here] is ever happy with their body,? the beautician said to me sheepishly. ?It wasn?t because I didn?t have it. I just wanted it to be better.?

American physicians started to take note of silicone as a breast augmenter. The practice of injecting silicone directly into the breasts spread throughout America in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, perpetrated by cosmeticians and plastic surgeons. Widely used by female entertainers, sex workers, and everyday women in the US?including Nancy Reagan??and it took some time before the horror stories of botched boob jobs bubbled to the surface of middle-class America. Over the years, many of these women suffered silicone cysts, collapsed nipples, and painful, rock-hard breasts.

In 1965, the FDA made it illegal for doctors without a special experimental permit to perform silicone injections?however, plastic surgeons kept pumping under the assumption that if they purchased the silicone made in their home state, they were operating outside the FDA?s jurisdiction. This continued until the practice started to fall out of favor in the late 60s and 70s due to countless horror stories and increasing regulations?states like Nevada and California made injections illegal in 1975, and several others followed suit.

With legal injections off the table, plastic surgeons turned to silicone implants, which were thought to be safer because the silicone was contained in an inert elastomer shell. However, due to studies linking implants to serious health issues, the FDA put implant manufacturers under a voluntary moratorium in 1992. In 2006 the FDA reapproved silicone-gel-filled implants, and they?ve since made a huge comeback, comprising 72 percent of all breast-augmentation procedures in the US in 2012. It was during the past two decades?when the country was engaged in a nationwide dialogue on the risks and benefits of implants?that silicone-injection procedures moved into the seedy underground.

Above all, it was the transgender community that really pioneered the backroom butt-injection scene in the 1980s and 90s. For a male transitioning to a female at that time, it was a ridiculous notion to think that insurance would foot the bill for procedures that made their outside look the way they felt on the inside. The black market was the go-to place for these types of augmentations because it was considerably cheaper. Also, at the time, the fat-transfer method had yet to be developed.

To get the results that were desired?round, feminine butts?injections were the preferred option for many in the transgender community. After some of these women made their transitions, they turned around and became butt doctors themselves, using the injection technique that they?d utilized on their own bodies first.

Since then, the practice has moved from the margins toward the mainstream. One of the poster children for the horrible effects of silicone pumping is a woman from Los Angeles named Apryl Michelle Brown, whose lower legs and arms were amputated after her body went septic due to complications from silicone injections she received in 2004.

Another high-profile victim was a 20-year-old woman named Claudia Seye Aderotimi. In 2011, she traveled from London to Philadelphia to get butt shots from Padge Victoria Windslowe, a transgender lady known in some circles as the ?Black Madam.? Claudia was an aspiring dancer, looking to enhance her figure so she could make it in the hip-hop music-video scene. She died of a pulmonary embolism almost immediately after injections of industrial-grade silicone entered her bloodstream and traveled to her liver, lungs, and brain. READ MORE

What do you think of this tragic epidemic of women altering their backsides for attention?

**Disclaimer: The photographs used in this post are for illustrative purposes only and do not imply any particular health status, behaviors, or actions on the part of any person who appears in the photographs.**